The approach
Diagnosis before repetition.
Four steps, always in this order. It is how an experiment is run: establish a baseline, isolate the cause, intervene, then measure against the baseline.
The method
Assess, diagnose, rebuild, measure.
1
Assess
The student works through a real official past paper while I watch how they think. The result is a baseline on the exam’s own scale.
2
Diagnose
Conceptual, technical and exam-performance problems are separated: which command term costs marks, where the method mark is earned and the accuracy mark lost.
3
Rebuild
We work on the areas with the greatest impact on the grade, around real past papers and the official markscheme.
4
Measure
Timed papers under exam conditions, compared with the baseline. Progress is measured, not assumed.
Parents are kept informed without having to ask. After each lesson a few lines appear in the family area: what was covered, what went wrong, what comes next. Nothing to reply to.
In practice
What a diagnosis looks like.
Typical pattern · not a real student
Observed
“The physics is right when we talk it through. On paper, three-mark questions come back with one.”
Diagnosis
Not a knowledge problem. “Explain” is answered as “state”: the conclusion is written, the chain of reasoning the markscheme rewards is not.
Intervention
Command terms trained one by one on official questions, each answer marked against the real markscheme line by line.
Three typical patterns, shown as illustrations. They are not real students.
Four situations
Do you recognise your child?
Works hard, but the grade doesn’t move.
- What is usually happening
- The hours go into what already works. The same two or three weaknesses cost marks in every test, and nobody has named them.
- What changes
- A baseline on a real paper shows where the marks actually go. The work narrows to those areas, and the next timed paper shows whether it worked.
Understands in class, loses it in the exam.
- What is usually happening
- Understanding is there; exam performance is a separate skill. Command terms, the structure of an answer and time per question were never trained.
- What changes
- Practice on official papers, marked the way examiners mark, until the markscheme stops being a surprise.
Has lost confidence in the subject.
- What is usually happening
- A run of poor results has turned into anxiety, and anxiety now costs more marks than the physics does.
- What changes
- Small, verifiable wins on real questions, in a setting where a mistake is information. Confidence follows evidence.
Already strong, aiming for a 7 at HL.
- What is usually happening
- The last grade boundary is decided by the hardest questions, the data-based questions of Paper 1B and the Internal Assessment, not by more of the same.
- What changes
- Work at the top of the markscheme, an ambitious IA, and questions beyond the syllabus for students heading to STEM degrees at selective universities.
Students who learn differently
Some students learn differently. With attention difficulties, ADHD or exam anxiety, the pace adapts to the student, mistakes are treated as part of the work, and confidence is built through small wins and progressive challenges.
Foundations
What the work is built on.
Official IB past papers
The last ten years
Internal Assessment in Physics
20% of the final grade
Extended Essay in Physics
4,000 words of independent research
A private family area
For each family
Before the Diploma
IGCSE & MYP Mathematics and Physics
Foundation and transition to the IB Diploma
Most difficulties in the Diploma start earlier. For students in the two years before it, the same method applies, with one more aim: arriving at the IB with the algebra, the mechanics and the exam habits already in place.
- Cambridge IGCSE Mathematics (0580), Core and Extended
- Cambridge IGCSE International Mathematics (0607)
- Cambridge IGCSE Additional Mathematics (0606)
- Cambridge IGCSE Physics (0625)
- Edexcel International GCSE Mathematics and Physics
- IB MYP Mathematics and Sciences, years 4 and 5
Initial assessment